The once-smart gardens are filled with weeds. The few dirty windows that are not draped with filthy sheets have faded curtains. Signs of decay and disrepair are everywhere.

Locals who feel they are being overrun complain of being pushed out of their once-thriving community by the most unsavoury characters society has to offer.

Students have officially been identified as the new scourge of Britain's towns and cities in a study blaming 'studentification' for a string of social evils.

They include destroying respectable neighbourhoods by driving out families, triggering rat infestations, causing vandalism and forcing the closure of corner shops in favour of tatty burger bars and cheap off-licences.

Frank Campion has lived in the Nottingham suburb of Lenton for three decades and barely recognises the place now dubbed 'kebabland'. Campion, 66, a retired shopworker, said: 'It is amazing. It used to be all families around here. Now it's dirty, down at heel and nothing but students.'

The situation has become so acute in Nottingham that the city council has commissioned a study that will look at ways of dispersing students around the city. For the residents of Lenton, whose origin goes all the way back to the Domesday Book, the effects of studentification are obvious.

Many local estate agents are solely devoted to student accommodation. Notices are posted up in their windows offering free valuations to people who have homes suitable for conversion into student flats. In Lenton, 42 per cent of the residents are students.

Campaigners say the effect on community life has been devastating. Pubs have been converted to theme bars, which often shut during the summer months when students have returned to their homes. Fast-food takeaways and off-licences selling cheap alcohol dominate the shopping streets. Schools have seen their class sizes plummet as families move out of the area. Inner-city factories have been converted into flats, as locals lose their jobs. House prices have also rocketed as landlords have created a property boom and now people wishing to move house but stay in the area have found themselves priced out of the market.

'In essence, these are problems that occur when a huge slice of the population is only here for 30 weeks of the year,' said Lenton councillor John Taylor. 'For everyone else, the services on offer and the sense of community have declined.'

Most residents agree. 'When I came here 12 years ago it was very friendly. Now I could not say that I even know my neighbours,' said Elizabeth Hamilton, 31.

The problem in Nottingham is particularly acute because of the rapid expansion of the student population, which has outstripped the city's ability to cope with it. Taylor believes local student numbers have jumped from 14,000 to 35,000 in a decade.

In the wake of the huge boom in student numbers entering higher education, large swathes of many cities are rapidly converting to fit the student market and are groaning under the strain. Studentification is becoming an issue to match the gentrification of the 1960s when working classes were shoved out of affordable housing in formerly run-down city areas by the middle classes. The attraction of sometimes unscrupulous landlords to bigger houses that can be converted into HMOs - houses in multiple occupancy - makes the effect visible and dramatic.

Dr Darren Smith, of Brighton University's school of the environment, has carried out a study of studentification and believes the problem is getting worse. In Leeds, especially in the Headingley area, there has been public concern over a rapid rise in student residences.

Community groups and local politicians believe some private landlords are running down areas to drive out owner-occupiers and break up established communities. They are demanding the city council license all HMOs and private landlords.

One solution is for universities to develop better accommodation strategies. In Leeds, Smith suggests building halls of residence in other parts of the city to introduce students to new areas, away from suburbs where studentification has hit the hardest. One new development could reverse the trend and use studentification to aid the regeneration of run-down areas. 'It's by the river and close to the city centre, the students love it, and as soon as the students arrived so did the bus services,' said Smith. 'The same now needs to be done in south Leeds.'

However, student groups defended their poor reputation as neighbours and tenants and said complaints about studentification masked serious issues about students being rented poor and unsafe housing.

'We have been campaigning for new legislation, which would make it a lot harder for unscrupulous landlords to get away with some of the unsafe and dreadful accommodation that is on offer,' said Mandy Telford, president of the National Union of Students.

'For example, 16 per cent of students are living in houses with vermin infestations.

'That's clearly not through choice, that's because landlords are getting away with it.'